Do Not Fall For The Baseball Captains novel Chapter 39

Immediate Evacuation

Victoria’s POV

I was going to press her and get more answers, however Eva’s phone buzzed

She snatched it off the desk, her eyes scanning the screen.

“Oh, shoot!” she gasped, her playful mood instantly vanishing into pure panic. “Keith is downstairs in the parking lot already. I have exactly ten minutes to finish this before he starts honking.”

She rushed back to her bed, grabbing handfuls of shirts and shoving them into her suitcase without even folding them.

She zipped the bag shut with a loud, aggressive screech, then paused, looking over at me with a confused expression.

“Wait, Victoria, why the hell aren’t you packing yet?”

I blinked, tilting my head. “Packing? For what?”

Eva stopped, staring at me like I had grown a second head.

“Are you serious? Did you not see the broadcast message our landlady sent out to the entire building earlier today?”

My brows furrowed. “No… I’ve been working on my project all afternoon. My notifications are turned off.”

“Check your email right now, girl,” Eva said, hoisting her heavy suitcase off the bed and dropping it onto the floor with a loud thud.

I scrambled across the mattress, grabbing my laptop and flipping it open. I quickly logged into the student housing portal and opened my inbox.

Right at the top was a bold, high–priority email from our property manager.

NOTICE OF IMMEDIATE EVACUATION FOR RENOVATIONS

“Wait, what is this?” I asked, my thumb scrolling rapidly down the screen as my eyes skimmed the text. “Why are they telling us to leave?”

“Because the main water pipe in the basement is about to burst or something,” Eva called out, her voice muffled as she leaned into her closet to grab a stray jacket. “They said it’s a critical infrastructure compromise. If they don’t shut down the entire eastern block to fix it right now, the whole heating system is going to fail.”

“Tonight? It says we have to vacate our units by eight o’clock tonight!” I looked up at the wall clock, panic finally setting in. “Eva, it’s already past six. That gives us less than two hours.”

immediate Evacuation

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she muttered, “the whole floor is completely losing their minds They’re shutting the building down for exactly seven days. I’m heading over to Keith’s apartment for the week. His roommates are out of town, so we have the place to ourselves.”

She stopped at the doorway, turning back to look at me with genuine concern. “Where are you going to go?”

I paused, my hands freezing over my keyboard.

The question hung in the quiet space between us, and suddenly, the realization that I had absolutely nowhere dawned on me.

Where would I go?

My mind immediately darted to Caleb, but I shut the thought down before it could even form. He had a girlfriend, and staying with him would send a message I wasn’t ready to send even though I’ll be thrilled to spend the entire week in his space.

Beyond that, it would completely destroy Nova if she ever found out I was staying under his roof after everything she had just confessed to me.

What about Elijah? A bitter, painful ache throbbed in my chest at the thought of him. He wasn’t even speaking to me.

Ever since our heated argument in the equipment closet, he had completely vanished.

I had tried calling him once, and I had sent two texts asking if we needed to coordinate our next public appearance, but he had left me on read. He was completely ignoring

1. me.

Was he really that furious that I had spent an evening fixing things with my lifelong best friend? Was he completely forgetting that this entire relationship was just a cold, business–like contract?

I didn’t know what his problem was, and my pride refused to let me beg for his attention when he was busy treating me this way.

I shook my head, discarding his face from my mind. I couldn’t go to him.

“Nova?” I whispered to myself, but immediately shook my head again. No. It was entirely too early in our friendship to ask for a massive favor like moving into her space for a full week.

Plus, with the fresh weight of her confession about Caleb, being around her right now felt like walking through a minefield. I needed distance to figure out how to handle the situation, not a shared living space.

My sister, Willow, came to mind next. I pulled up her contact info on my phone, my thumb hovering over the dial button, but then I stopped.

immediate Evacuation

Willow’s apartment was almost an hour away from the Crowswell campus.

My car was currently sitting in the back of a greasy mechanic shop down the street, held hostage because I hadn’t been able to scrape together the final three hundred dollars to complete the payment for its transmission repair.

Without a vehicle, commuting an hour back and forth for my daily engineering labs would be completely impossible. I couldn’t afford the daily rideshare fees, and I absolutely refused to call my parents to beg for a loan.

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